Currently, digital technologies are widely used in information and communication applications. While digital representation of information may provide improved precision, human sensory functions are believed to be fundamentally analog in nature. Frequently, information, although represented in digital form, is communicated to human users in analog form. For example, it is routine to digitize an image but present the image on a display device, with digitized signal strength converted to brightness of a light emitting element of the display device.
As is generally known, digitized signals are typically represented in discrete elements, such as bits. The relative range and resolution of a signal that can be represented in digital form are limited by the number of bits used to represent signal strength. Increasing the number of bits increases the range and resolution of the signal that can be represented in digital format. However, demand on data storage, data transmission and data generation also increases as more bits are used. Simply increasing the number of bits therefore may impose an unacceptable burden on energy consumption, data processing capability, and requirements on data transmission bandwidth and data storage.